Paper woes: DP furloughs all; PortFolio folds

The daily hiked its single-copy price from 50 to 75 cents in September.FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Facing mounting debt, Daily Progress parent company Media General Inc. has announced plans to furlough employees, the Daily Progress reports. Beginning in March, all 5,600 employees at The Daily Progress, Richmond Times-Dispatch and the many other newspapers and television stations the company owns must take 10 days off without pay.

According to Ray Kozakewicz, manager of corporate communication for Media General in Richmond, employees are free to choose which 10 days they want to "take off," as long as they take four in March and the rest before the end of the third fiscal quarter in September. In addition, the company announced it would stop matching 401(k) contributions April 1 until the end of the year.

According to Daily Progress managing editor McGregor McCance, the paper has decided to handle the bulk of the furlough requirements by "closing" on four Mondays in March, three Mondays in May and three Mondays in July. "At the same time," he says, "we'll still have some newsroom people and circulation people working to cover stories, produce the paper, and get it to subscribers on those Mondays.

"It won't be easy and we may not do it exactly the way the Times-Dispatch or the Tampa Tribune do it," says McCance. "To me, the bottom line is we're going to meet the furlough requirements that are being done by Media General to free up cash in response to the poor economy."

And Media General is not alone.

On the same day as this announcement, February 19, the parent company of a free weekly publication serving the Tidewater area announced that the February 24 print edition of 26-year-old PortFolio would be its last. While Landmark Communications is pulling the plug on PortFolio, the company hopes to preserve some of its content in the Thursday edition of sister publication, the Virginian-Pilot, according to a report in the Pilot.

According to an AP report, ad revenue for the U.S. Newspaper industry as a whole has dropped 40 percent since 2006, and newspapers across the country are feeling the pain.

Meanwhile, Charlottesville's daily will soldier on.

"We'll be trying our best to put out a solid local report as we try to do every day already," says McCance. "And the paper will be published and delivered each day."

–last updated 2/20/09 12:20pm

9 comments

Mark February 19th, 2009 | 2:29pm

The DP is not a great paper, and 75 cents is a rip-off for 15 pages of news, but a lousy daily local paper is better than nothing.
Weeklies can't fill the void, although the online sites are updated daily. Looking at a computer screen with your morning coffee in hand is not the same as thumbing through the paper.
I hope they figure something out.

freelovefreida February 19th, 2009 | 3:02pm

The weeklies also readily admit that they don't like carrying the mainstream, "happy" news, like wedding announcements, ribbon-cuttings, boy scout achievements, or even feature-y articles covering, for instance, who spoke at this week's convention or luncheon meeting. And they only choose to focus on this type of coverage if there is a potential for dirt, controversy, mockery, or an opportunity for investigative reporting. If the Daily Progresses of the world cease to exist, who will cover that portion of the news that actually creates positive community? And who in the heck will run the obits?

Derrick February 19th, 2009 | 4:54pm

It's pathetic how the weekly papers try and bash the #1 media outlet in the county to try and gain an edge over them. News flash, you will be gone long before they will. Anyone with a brain can see this is just a cost cutting measure. Even your favorite media outlets are dealing with the economic crisis. The Hook is no different, probably worse off.

Bob February 19th, 2009 | 9:32pm

The DP is terrible and has been foe decades. On the one hand, it's good to have a paper of record, but it's not even that anymore. It's a corporate outpost with dated wire stories, very limited local reporting, and not much more. When I do see it, it's largely obituaries, right-wing opinion pieces, and ads. Good night, DP.

Bob February 20th, 2009 | 3:23pm

I stopped getting the DP about a year ago and still hear all the news on the TV or internet. When I was a kid, the newspaper carried a lot of local interesting information. Those days are gone. The DP needs to be more of a local newspaper and not General Media, tee hee........ Not worth 75 cents. The only thing I miss is the crossword puzzle and Shoe....

Darwin February 20th, 2009 | 4:05pm

Though "publicly held" Media General is actually a company tightly controlled by one family. Check the SEC filings and major shareholders -- all public info.

Media General's handful of major shareholderrs have been sucking the cream off MG properties for a decade. They hire rookies for slave wages and work them to death. Their advertising is exorbitant (and ultimately ineffective, as smart businesspeople are now realizing). They treat their employees like mushrooms: feed 'em sh!t and keep them in the dark.

And their business model, like so many news-media companies, is absurd -- charge 75 cents for a daily product, the major substance of which can be had online for free.

Goofy. And ultimately doomed to fail.

Tom February 20th, 2009 | 6:10pm

While it would be tempting to blame the economy for the woes of the MG properties like the Progress and TD, that's too easy an out. Some papers are still growing circulation in times like these. See, for example, Fredericksburg's The Free-Lance Star.

Unlike The Free-Lance Star, the editors at the Progress and TD have the news sense of a rock. I still find it unbelievable that the Progress buried the initial story on the death of LeRoi Moore on the inside of the front section. Meanwhile, down in Richmond, the front page focus is too often the latest local who is competing on American Idol.

I feel bad for most of the employees of the Media General properties. Their management and corporate ownership has slowly run the company into the ground

Good Riddance, Media General February 21st, 2009 | 7:49am

People who work in journalism are some of the best people to know. Teh yare inquisitive, fair-minded, thoughtful. Thye put great effort and pride into their work.

Media General systematically beats all of that out if its employees. Rather than help reporters grow and develop their craft, the company seemingly looks for ways to fu*ck them up, to change the rules constantly and keep workers off-kilter.

The "total quality management" and bean-counting programs are just thinly veiled schemes for extracting more work for flat pay.

And when that company finally goes belly-up, the only people who will suffer will be the employees who propped it up for so long with their slave labor -- always strung along by promises that will never be kept.

Good Riddance, Media General February 21st, 2009 | 7:50am

People who work in journalism are some of the best people to know. They are inquisitive, fair-minded, thoughtful. They put great effort and pride into their work.

Media General systematically beats all of that out if its employees. Rather than help reporters grow and develop their craft, the company seemingly looks for ways to fu*ck them up, to change the rules constantly and keep workers off-kilter.

The "total quality management" and bean-counting programs are just thinly veiled schemes for extracting more work for flat pay.

And when that company finally goes belly-up, the only people who will suffer will be the employees who propped it up for so long with their slave labor -- always strung along by promises that will never be kept.